Wolf’s CCCC requires lots of see-see-see-see

Wolf’s CCCC requires lots of see-see-see-see

In the
typical fashion of
“We’re from the government and we’re here to help you,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom
Wolf last week channeled his inner Franklin Delano Roosevelt with the creation
of the “Commonwealth Civilian Coronavirus Corps (CCCC).”

The program,
the governor says, will beef up “contact tracing” across the Keystone State, an
effort to better contain and mitigate the coronavirus.

The CCCC “will
reduce our unemployment rate while making a lasting health and economic
contribution to our commonwealth,” Wolf said. “By maximizing our testing and
contact tracing capacities, we can contain Covid-19 without widely freezing the
movement of Pennsylvanians.”

But will it
freeze civil liberties in the process? What of our fundamental rights in the
original state of independence where interstate highway border signs encourage
all comers to “Pursue Your Happiness”?

Wolf
portrays the Pennsylvania quarantine cooperation effort as voluntary. But there
are few details available, including exactly how it would be paid for. Wolf,
however, is hoping for federal funding.

And Wolf is
not a lone wolf in proposing such a program.

New York
State has what is referred to as a “tracing army.” Commentators in New York
City refer to the Big Apple’s program as one of “disease detectives.”

And in
California, Gov. Gavin Newsom last week announced the creation of an “army and
a workforce” of contract tracers to track down the infected and quarantine
them.

Forcibly.

In at least
one California county – Ventura – health officials are talking about involuntary
internment in “other kinds of housing that we have available.”

Good grief.

“Why
is it that we’re freeing prisoners and locking up innocents?” asked one
commentator on PJMedia.com.

“As the United
States begins reopening its economy, some state officials are weighing whether
house arrest monitoring technology – including ankle bracelets or location-tracking
apps – could be used to (enforce) police quarantines imposed on coronavirus
carriers.”

Surely this is
not what the Framers envisioned in a Commerce Clause that indeed grants
government broad public safety powers. Is it?

Tom Wolf’s
Commonwealth Civilian Coronavirus Corps might be well-intentioned. No
doubt there is ample scientific/medical evidence to suggest that contact
tracing can be a valuable tool in halting the spread of infectious diseases.

But given the
paucity of the details of the Pennsylvania program – including if the contact
tracing will be one-on-one with limited digital data gathering or will it
employ widely derided cell phone apps that collect, collate and store data,
making it ripe for government abuse – it can only be viewed with a jaundiced
eye.

Yet again,
transparency must be the guidepost for such a program. And the only thing that
can begin to eradicate the first-blush jaundiced view of Wolf’s CCCC is the
see-see-see-see that absolute sunlight will provide.

Colin
McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute
for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).